Boards of canada - geogaddi
Introduction. A lot of musicians talk about satan. Weather its warning against his "evil, corruptive influence" or basking in the reactions they attempt to stir by invoking his image. The latter especially in metal music, which despite its sonic extremity, rarely treats satan as much more than a trope to allude to a tired edginess, like you are part of the "trve kvlt" or whatever for daring to bellow his name in a guttural growl. It can almost feel like listening to the equivalent of a theme park ride, where subjects of darkness are treated as a thrilling scare to be experienced in a safe environment where there is no real danger and you get to have your adrenaline spiked for a few minutes. I bring this up as a precursor to this review as very few artists im aware of treat the idea of hell or satan in anything other than these two ways. They treat this being of darkness, dread and eternal torture, all things corrupt and wicked as a surface level figure. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a fun ride and most of these artists are self aware of what they are doing. But, this album to me truly explores this darkness, not just satan as a tangible being but as this existential, barely comprehensible horror of human instinct. This symbol of despair and corruption thruought thousands of years of dogmatic christianity whose values still permeate our culture in ways we are still yet to truly understand or break away from individually and culturally. In fact if i was to break down to it's essence what this album sounds like, it would be a warning. A signpost written in symbols whose aims are to be understood long after they’ve been written.
“Do not go here.”
“Do not enter this place”
This album is the sonic equivalent of seeing the devil for a split second in an unfamiliar place, analysing the lead up, duration of and aftermath of that experience. For it, it to me gains the title as one of the most haunting albums out there.
Music analysis There are very few lyrics on this album, the ones that are here are sampled from classic boards of canada sources (sesame street, various old PSAs and sitcoms), so to create this world of visceral darkness, what lyrics there are, are merged into the sonic egragore of the albums sound palette.
One of my favourite examples of this is the track “dandelion”, which samples an old documentary about divers exploring the sea surface for the siphonophore the track is named after. In the context of the documentary it is a relatively tame overview of the actions taken by the divers, describing the various actions they take and the hazards they face. In the context of the album however, the dandelion becomes a warped entity. Most people do not know what a dandelion is in the context of sea life and so this object is perfectly malleable in our minds. We can project whatever darkness the albums stirs within us onto it. The narrator’s calm demeanour when saying “the preparation for a dive is always a tense time” for example turns from a device used to create a minutia of tension to retain a TV audience’s attention into a playground for our imagination to wander.
In terms of instrumentation. synthesisers are warped and resampled until they sound barely functional (corsair), and the drums sound like they were pulled straight from liveleak footage of satanic rites (gyroscope).
My favourite example is on the track "opening the mouth". The synthesisers sound disorientating, not quite harmonious enough to create a melody but just tonal enough to create a tangible sense of progression. This track is one i dont see talked about as much among BOC fans, but to me its the centrepiece on the album. It is the metaphorical point where you see the devil, the dizzying synths and whispered samples conveying that moment of seeing something you cannot possibly understand that seems to somehow last forever and yet ends instantly. Conclusion
To be honest, as hard as i have tried to describe this album, it is as subjective to its fans as it's sound is almost incomprehensible. If you haven't heard it i massively encourage you to set aside an hour, take a walk at dusk and just listen. I promise it will leave some kind of impact on you. That being said, this might not be for you if you are superstitious or sensitive to to anything supernatural. I consider myself agnostic but if BOC were to be interviewed tomorrow and reveal they had opened some kind of portal to hell in order to make this i would sincerely believe them. There is nothing out there like this album and you should absolutely listen to it at least once.